Site Mobile Navigation

A New Berkeley Plan, but Still Old Concerns

Downtown Berkeley could be getting a major makeover. But first the city’s leaders and residents will have to come to terms on how they want that facelift to proceed.

A proposal by Mayor Tom Bates has won the tentative blessing of the City Council and is under review by the planning commission. It will probably be tweaked some more and then sent to the November ballot to seek the voters’ blessing.

Obtaining that consent will be no easy task. The Council approved an earlier version of Mr. Bates’s downtown plan last summer, only to see a citizens coalition collect 9,200 signatures to force a referendum. Rather than fight that battle, the mayor asked the Council to rescind its approval and revise the plan.

Berkeley’s highly engaged citizenry means that any number of interest groups — supporters of mass transit, historic structures, low-income housing, open space, child care and green buildings, for example — must be satisfied, or at least mollified, for the plan to have a chance to succeed. And even if all those groups sign off, people who simply do not want change might still derail the plan.

“Twenty percent to 25 percent of the people here are against any change whatsoever to anything,” Mr. Bates said last week in an interview. “There is a large group of people who just don’t want any alterations.”

Mr. Bates acknowledged that his latest plan was vulnerable to the accusation that it would lead to what even he called the “Manhattanization of Berkeley” — with numerous tall buildings and more traffic and congestion.

Mr. Bates said his city was in the midst of a “renaissance” but still needed more people living downtown to create the critical mass required to attract retail and cultural amenities and others.

“The question is how do we get another 5,000 people living in the downtown, to increase the viability of the downtown and make it more exciting,” he said.

Some of his other goals include addressing the city’s imbalance between jobs and housing, enhancing Berkeley’s reputation as a leader in urban environmentalism and making the city friendlier to bicycles and pedestrians.

The new blueprint calls for a handful of taller buildings and greater population density, especially around the city’s Bay Area Rapid Transit station. It would allow five buildings taller than the current height limit of 75 feet. Included among them would be two residential buildings and a hotel at 180 feet — about 18 stories — and two mixed-use buildings no taller than 120 feet. That is half as many tall buildings as were permitted in the original plan.

But Councilman Jesse Arreguin, who helped spark last summer’s voter revolt, said many of his constituents opposed any new high-rise towers.

“People move to Berkeley because they like its unique character,” Mr. Arreguin said. “They did not want to live in a high-rise city. They wanted to live in a city that has a more human scale.”

Mr. Arreguin is also not sold on what the city calls a “green pathway,” allowing developers to win speedy approvals if they meet a long list of conditions designed to satisfy the sensibilities of Berkeley’s progressives.

There are rules requiring 20 percent of housing units to be affordable for low-income people. Building owners must provide car-sharing opportunities, bicycle parking and transit passes. They must also exceed the latest energy efficiency requirements, provide recycling services and ensure that their projects cause no new net water runoff.

The city would require builders to employ about a third of their workers from Berkeley or the East Bay’s “Green Corridor,” and builders of larger structures will have to pay prevailing wages, a union-wage standard typically required only for publicly-financed projects.

Finally, builders would have to pay fees to support public transit, child care and open space.

Mr. Arreguin said that the new plan showed “more promise” than the old one, but that he was not convinced that the requirements on developers were enforceable as written.

“I want to see a vibrant downtown where there is housing for people of all income levels, that is a model of environmental sustainability and a regional destination,” Mr. Arreguin said. “I think some of the things we are asking developers to provide are still unclear.”

And until those things are clarified to the satisfaction of Mr. Arreguin and his allies, the future of Berkeley’s downtown will be just as murky.

Daniel Weintraub has reported on California politics and policy for more than 20 years.

A version of this article appears in print on March 21, 2010, on page A25A of the National edition with the headline: A New Berkeley Plan, But Still Old Concerns. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe